Lost in Trans­la­tion: The unsung art of subtitling

Read through the list of the win­ners of the Inter­na­tion­al Book­er Prize, you will find the author, their book’s title, and the novel’s Eng­lish-lan­guage trans­la­tor. Look through the list of the nom­i­na­tions or win­ners of the best Inter­na­tion­al Film at the Oscars and you won’t find the name of the indi­vid­u­als who trans­lat­ed the dia­logue and pro­vid­ed the Eng­lish sub­ti­tles. Whilst film as a medi­um doesn’t rely on lan­guage as much as a nov­el does, one can assume that the Acad­e­my are mak­ing a judge­ment on the qual­i­ty of the picture’s screen­play based in part on the dia­logue that goes along with the cin­e­matog­ra­phy. Who is bring­ing inter­na­tion­al films to Eng­lish-speak­ing audi­ences? Does the film world not owe them their dues? Think of all the for­eign-lan­guage films holed up in archives or that nev­er find dis­tri­b­u­tion after fes­ti­val sea­son. Per­haps the solu­tion to the prob­lem of access­ing these sto­ries is to recog­nise trans­la­tion and sub­ti­tling as the art it tru­ly is.

I had been watch­ing Hiroshi­ma mon Amour on the ser­vice Kanopy when the ques­tion of trans­la­tion attri­bu­tion first crossed my mind. Resnais’ film was a set ​‘text’ for an essay I was writ­ing as part of my degree; with any oth­er source in trans­la­tion, I would be expect­ed to give cred­it to the trans­la­tor. Yet I couldn’t find a name – not in the cred­its, nor list­ed on the stream­ing ser­vice – and turn­ing to the inter­net only left me with more ques­tions. In the stream­ing age, it is eas­i­er than ever to access inter­na­tion­al film, hours and hours of which are near­ly always avail­able subtitled.

Mubi have in house subtitlers/​translators that help pro­vide their cat­a­logue with sub­ti­tles for a range of dif­fer­ent lan­guages, but if the respon­si­bil­i­ty falls on the stream­ing ser­vice to trans­late the sto­ry, does that not mean that our expe­ri­ence dif­fers from plat­form to plat­form? Take Ama­zon Prime; for a large por­tion of its Eng­lish lan­guage cat­a­logue, there are no sub­ti­tles, and in the cas­es that there are some, they are usu­al­ly only avail­able in Eng­lish. If you want­ed to watch Bicy­cle Thieves with the native Ital­ian, you couldn’t – a stag­ger­ing real­i­ty when con­sid­er­ing that more peo­ple, espe­cial­ly young peo­ple, are using sub­ti­tles when stream­ing, even in their native lan­guage. In this sense, the Anglo­cen­tric film world does not seem to care about allow­ing the non-Eng­lish speak­ing world to access Eng­lish-lan­guage film, while also dis­play­ing con­tin­ued dis­in­ter­est in improv­ing accessibility.

Sim­i­lar­ly, it would be a touch Anglo­cen­tric to expect that in the pro­duc­tion of an inter­na­tion­al film, the film­mak­ers and pro­duc­tion team auto­mat­i­cal­ly hire some­one to trans­late the sto­ry into Eng­lish. In the pub­lish­ing world, this is a job that falls on the team behind the scenes rather than the artist. Yet in allow­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­nies, stream­ing ser­vices and any­one with a sec­ond lan­guage (and access to YouTube or the Inter­net Archive) to have the con­trol over the trans­la­tion and sub­ti­tling process, I can’t help but think per­haps we are all watch­ing slight­ly dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the same film.

At least with dub­bing there is an ele­ment of stan­dard­i­s­a­tion – but in attempt­ing to watch a film in one’s moth­er tongue, we lose the inflec­tions and quirks that can­not be trans­lat­ed. Grow­ing up watch­ing Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, I always chose the dub over the sub; I came to know Cal­cifer as Bil­ly Crys­tal, yet of course, orig­i­nal­ly that was not the case. There is a lin­guis­tic hypoth­e­sis, Sapir-Whorf, that claims the lan­guage we speak influ­ences our per­cep­tion of the world around us. In watch­ing Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle in Eng­lish, am I fun­da­men­tal­ly chang­ing my per­cep­tion of the sto­ry, or is that giv­ing too much cred­it to the lan­guage in what is ulti­mate­ly a visu­al medium?

It might feel like quite the group effort when it comes to sub­ti­tling films, yet if the respon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­vide sub­ti­tles falls sole­ly to the com­pa­nies hop­ing to draw in audi­ences and box office returns, will there always be films left inac­ces­si­ble. Will we always only see the Inter­na­tion­al films that win prizes and make mon­ey? I think of all the Eng­lish-lan­guage films released in the UK each year and won­der: if there is the same quan­ti­ty of French, Span­ish, Ara­bic or oth­er non-Eng­lish films being released in the same year, are Eng­lish-speak­ers not miss­ing out on a whole world of cinema?

Even Eng­lish sub­ti­tles on Eng­lish lan­guage films open up sto­ries to those who oth­er­wise would miss out, such as view­ers with lim­it­ed hear­ing or neu­ro­log­i­cal pro­cess­ing con­di­tions. In every sense, sub­ti­tling improves access. As Bong Joon Ho empha­sised in his accep­tance speech at the 2020 Gold­en Globes, once we over­come the one-inch bar­ri­er of sub­ti­tles, ​“you will be intro­duced to so many more amaz­ing films” yet we take the words in front of us for grant­ed. In decid­ing Par­a­site was deserv­ing of the Oscar for Best Orig­i­nal Screen­play, we can assume mem­bers of the acad­e­my read/​watched a trans­lat­ed ver­sion. There is no doubt that Par­a­site was deserv­ing of the award, but to what extent is the per­son who made it acces­si­ble to the Eng­lish-speak­ing world also an artist? They didn’t cre­ate the sto­ry, yet is the best screen­play declared the best whol­ly through the sto­ry? What about dia­logue and cap­tur­ing col­lo­qui­al­ism, cap­tur­ing region­al accents or trans­lat­ing words with no direct Eng­lish equiv­a­lent. Per­haps the ques­tion should be: what is missed through bad trans­la­tion and sub­ti­tling? How many char­ac­ters with region­al accents are reduced to RP Eng­lish in their trans­la­tions? Think in reverse, how could a sub­ti­tler cap­ture a Scot­tish or West Coun­try dialect in French?

Per­haps some­thing will always be lost when watch­ing a film in a lan­guage you do not know, and Eng­lish-speak­ers should try watch­ing inter­na­tion­al films with­out the aid of sub­ti­tles, digest­ing film as a pure­ly visu­al medi­um, return­ing to the age of silent film. But a bet­ter way for­ward would be to start cel­e­brat­ing the work of the sub­ti­tler; to praise their con­tri­bu­tion to the glob­al cin­e­ma land­scape, and their vital role in bring­ing sto­ries across borders.